


Marvelously I am no longer sure you know

by orphan_account



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Art Student Clarke, F/F, stuck together, the 100 au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-02 16:51:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10222832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Clarke is stoked to be part of an artwork by Anya Van Der Wald. At least, she is until she discovers who she is going to be posing with.One shot.Stuck together was one of the themes for Clexaweek, but seemingly, my aversion to deadlines applies here too...





	

_This_ -

She’d been really pleased with herself – fifty bucks to be part of an art work by no less than Anya Van Der Wald. She’d have _paid_ fifty bucks. More, even. And she’d showed up early – keen, Octavia laughed at her, the always late Clarke – and had watched the artist set up, her assistant shockingly easy on the eye, all hard edges and wise cracks. Raven, she’d said. No Poe jokes, she’d said. And Clarke didn’t even mind that Anya had barely nodded at her, or any of them, fifteen art students shivering in white underwear while they waited in the cold of the studio. She was rude to everyone, apparently. It was like, her thing.

She was easier when she was setting them up. She’d guided Clarke into place, her hands surprisingly gentle as she settled her limbs into a configuration that made no obvious sense to Clarke, her right arm extended, her left hip twisting forward.

Can you hold this? she’d asked, and her voice, yes, she spoke as though she were used to giving orders, but in this instance with a softer note. Clarke thought about it, nodded. 

You’re sure? she’d said. You’ll be like this for a while, and there’ll be someone echoing you – she gestured, a sweep of her hand tracing the empty space now bordered by the soft, twisting line of Clarke’s body. 

Close? Clarke asked. 

Yes, the artist replied. 

It’ll be fine, she decided out loud. It’ll be fucking _lit_ , she thought. Part of a work by Anya Van Der Wald. Of course she can hold it.

That was then. Now though. She can feel the prickle of sweat starting, even though it’s freezing, and the burn of muscles held artificially still. And she wants to close her eyes, because _this_ fucker –

You can stand easy, Anya had said. You’ll remember, yes? Your arm like this, and – Clarke nodded. I’ll be back. Let me just see to the others. 

She stalked off – really, stalked, like a cross between a bandit and a fucking queen, leather and hauteur in perfect balance. Clarke had stretched her shoulders out, rolled them, as though she were preparing for a marathon. She wasn’t the only one – everyone she could see moving. There was a guy practically doing squats opposite her. Nobody’s first rodeo.

Anya came back about fifteen minutes later, and she wasn’t alone.

Clarke, yes? she said. Can you remember the pose? 

Sure, Clarke replied, and stepped into place. 

Right, the artist said, turning to the woman behind her, her hand reaching out to draw her into Clarke’s space. Right into Clarke’s personal space.

It’s like a car crash in a movie. Slow. _You,_ she hisses, but it comes out warped. The woman scowls back, the way she does. The way she always fucking does. Anya looks at them, her face still, eyes sharp.

Is there a problem? she asks. Lexa? You know each other?

It’s fine. Clipped. Clarke knows this tone better than any other. She knows Lexa’s voice is smooth, musical, but not for her. For her, it’s curt, monosyllabic. She wonders again, but indignation drowns it. Anya is frowning, and then her mouth closes and her eyes land on Clarke. A hard stare.

Clarke nods at her. She won’t let this fucker –

Anya. I said –

Okay. Clarke, can you?

She nods again, and inches back into the stance they’d agreed. Anya looks, tugs gently on her elbow, pulling her arm outwards.

Okay? she asks again.

Sure, Clarke replies. Fuck my life, she thinks. And then it’s worse, because Anya is easing Lexa into position, curving her into the space Clarke’s body defines. She can feel her breath, soft and warm against her cheek, and she averts her eyes. If the air moved, Lexa’s hair would be tickling the skin of her shoulder. They are millimetres from an embrace.

Anya moves on. Body heat behind her - the squatting guy. It’s lower, he must be crouching, she thinks. But it’s the body heat in front of her that transfixes her. She keeps her eyes on the ceiling.

There are a few more minutes when the artist’s voice drifts in and out, soft individual instructions, and then her voice cuts into the space.

We’ll be starting soon. The first layer is gonna be kind of greasy, and then there’ll be three more coats. It’s gonna be cold when it hits you, but I’d appreciate it if you’d do your best to stay in position. Raven’s gonna be taking some pics, so there might be some flash, just to warn you. Okay? Nobody replies.

Okay, says Anya, maybe to herself.

Raven smirks as she takes a picture of Clarke and Lexa, curved around each other, the slender gap between them warming up. Neither of them notice.

It seems like forever. Lexa’s breath sounds loud to her. It’s as close as they’ve been since –

Eventually, she can’t look at the ceiling anymore, but there’s nothing else to see except Lexa, filling her field of vision. Still, she tries – the choice is Lexa’s face, or her body. Her body is easier, Clarke thinks at first, not that hard green gaze, heavy-lidded, disdainful. Taking her right back: Lexa looming out of the evening, the sounds of the train station at her back. The look in her eyes, stone cold.

But of course, it’s not easier. The black ink she’d followed, fingers and tongue. The shadows thrown by her collarbones, exactly the same. The barest hint of muscle defining her upper arms, the curve of her breasts. In this cold space, her nipples are insistent against the silk of her camisole – ivory, not white - and Clarke is suddenly blinking away her memories, and raising her eyes. Because the anger’s easier than this. Fuck, she thinks. Fuck.

It’s like being smacked. That’s how she feels it, the jolt backwards as though she’d been struck, knocked briefly out of position. She struggles back – it feels like a struggle, and while she does so, Lexa’s eyes rest on her, and they are –

I mean, she thinks, what is that look?

It has been months, and what Clarke has remembered is the coldness at the train station, not this softer gaze. This – something sad. Wide and green, that slightly greyish green: sitka spruce, winter-lit. Thinking it makes her feel like a fool, all over again. And her lips bitten red. Clarke feels caught and stupid. She presses her own lips together, blinks hard. Scowls.

They’re still and staring, and Clarke has to fight, to blink and fight the sting in her eyes. You hate her, she reminds herself. She left you. In a fucking train station in a foreign country. She left you and she’s been a bitch ever since, cold and closed and snapping whenever your paths cross. Which is not that often, at least. You hate her.

But Lexa looks at her with those wide, sad eyes, and Clarke feels her wretched, traitorous heart hammering, hammering.

And then.

I’m sorry, Lexa breathes and that’s when the first layer hits, a translucent grease, the force of it knocking them closer together. Eyes clamped shut.

Sorry, Clarke mutters back, when the flow against them stops, the hose clattering to the ground. Sorry, sorry. They slide against each other, skin slicked. Clarke feels it in her whole body, the contact between them, the effort it takes her, takes them both, to separate. Lexa’s eyes look darker. She is sure her own, too.

The grease slips over their skin like thickened water. It has a slight scent, unpleasantly chemical. Clarke shivers, and she isn’t sure why. She keeps her eyes fixed on Lexa. The grease darkening her hair to black. God, she doesn’t know whether she wants to hit her or kiss her or run.

All of them, maybe.

I never meant – Lexa’s voice is soft. Hesitant.

Didn’t mean to just fucking walk away and leave me? Didn’t mean to make me feel like – She almost forgets, almost shakes her head.

No, I mean –

You know, we don’t have to talk, Lexa. Clarke closes her eyes again. The easiest of all these hard choices.

Okay, time for the next layer, Raven calls. Better keep your mouths shut, people. This one tastes lousy.

 

*

 

Clarke receives an invitation in the mail, two months later. Cordially invited. Trikru Gallery presents Stucco, a new work by Anya Van Der Wald. _Clarke - look forward to seeing you - Anya_ , is scrawled on the back.

She almost doesn’t go. The whole thing – she had been over it, over her, and then two hours with Lexa pressed up against her had derailed her entirely, even if they hadn’t spoken again. The look she had though. It replaces the cold gaze of the train station in her memory. Clarke thinks it’s worse.

So she almost doesn’t go. She can go some other time, an empty gallery, just her and whatever forms their resistance to the chemicals they’d been sprayed with took, whatever Anya had wrought out of them. She’s interested – it’s Anya Van Der Wald – but she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to stand it, either. She calls her mother and suggests that she might visit for the weekend, puts the invitation away. She doesn’t intend to go.

But the evening of the opening rolls around, and Clarke doesn’t go to her mother’s, two days of fielding pointed comments about her choices seeming less attractive when it comes to it. She still doesn’t intend to go to the gallery though, right up until the moment when suddenly she’s overtaken by an irritation that makes her pace her apartment. She’s been part of a piece by Anya Van Der Wald, and why should she let that be undermined by Lexa? She’s pretty sure the other woman won’t let Clarke’s presence bother her. She’s so annoyed by the thought, she’s at the door of her apartment before she realises that she’s wearing a ripped, paint stained sweatshirt and her hair is piled in a rough bun at the back of her head. She swears at herself, and turns around.

When she has washed the paint smears from her cheeks – she’d looked a little as though she were prepared for battle, and maybe she was – and changed (the blue shirt with the cut that just hinted at cleavage, and tight black jeans that she knew flattered her, because why shouldn’t she look good), she chooses to walk to the gallery. It’s not far, and she’s feeling jumpy. She’s almost there when it starts raining, a torrential downpour that overwhelms the blazer she’s chosen to wear despite the speed at which she runs the last two blocks. She bursts from the darkening, deluged street into the white light of the gallery space, water dripping and splashing from her as she moves.

  
The light is dazzling, and it takes a second for her eyes to adjust. And when they do, she finds herself trapped at the entrance with a puddle forming at her feet under the sweep of Lexa’s eyes. Clarke is frozen as the other woman’s gaze trickles downwards, as though following the rainwater. Her lips part, and in the brightly illuminated gallery, her eyes look black. Clarke scowls at her as Lexa catches herself, jerking her eyes away, and in the same instant, Raven appears.

Clarke! She touches her sleeve, looking at the water running off her.

No need to re-enact the process, we got it on camera, she says, laughing. Unless you want to, of course. Clarke thinks she sees her eyes flit to where Lexa was standing, but when she looks, three suited men have filled that space, and Lexa has disappeared.

Uh, yeah. Clarke looks down at herself. I’m kind of –

Come on. Raven tugs on her hand. There’ll be some towels out back.

It would look like any office space, if it weren’t for the canvases leaning against every spare wall space, three or four deep.

Take that off, says Raven, gesturing at her blazer. I’ll be back in a second.

Clarke hangs the blazer on the back of a chair. It’s dripping. She wonders if the rain is still pouring down, if she should just cut her losses and run home. But before she can decide, Raven is back with a towel in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other.

Here, she says. Champagne always helps.

Clarke nods and restrains herself from swallowing the drink in one go. She takes a sip, puts it down, and scrubs at herself with the towel.

So, says Raven. You know Lexa.

Not really. Clarke keeps her voice level.

Oh. I thought –

We’ve met. I wouldn’t say much more than that. Her voice low; Raven’s eyebrows twitch upwards.

Yeah? Anya said –

I can’t see how this is any of your business, Clarke snaps out.

No, you’re right. Raven sighs. Take your time here, she says. I’ll see you back out there.

She steps towards the door, and stops there for a minute. Clarke waits. She doesn’t look back but her voice, as she reaches for the door handle, is clear.

Things haven’t always been easy for Lexa, you know. Maybe you should let her explain.

Raven closes the door after her carefully, so that it makes no sound.

Clarke drops into the chair, burying her face in the towel. It smells faintly musty, as though it was stored somewhere a little damp. Grimacing, she casts it aside, and opts for the champagne. She knocks it back - the fizz is abrasive at the back of her throat. She could drink more of it, she thinks, standing up. She’s turning, when the door opens again.

Rae –

Of course. Of course it’s her.

Lexa stops as though the air has thickened into a barrier, her mouth opening. Clarke feels like they are both hanging, some kink in the flow of time catching and suspending them. Despite herself, she observes the loose tumble of Lexa’s hair over her shoulder, brushing the line of her collar bone, and the fall of her dress, its stretch from hip to hip. Angles and curves. Clarke has never been able to ignore it, the way she feels both bludgeoned and soothed by the other woman’s beauty. Now she stands and stares, until the sound of her name drops from Lexa’s lips, and she remembers herself.

Yes? She hoped for sharpness, but her voice is small and hoarse.

I was looking for Raven.

She isn’t here.

I – Yes. Lexa drops her head, her eyes stretching open, blinking shut. She breathes and looks up, and Clarke sees her making herself speak slowly.

I’m so sorry, Clarke, for the way I behaved.

Clarke opens her mouth, to snarl, to refuse it, but nothing comes out.

I was – it was –

Is this like some sort of twelve steps thing?

Clarke hears the words falling from her own mouth and winces away from them. Something hard flickers in Lexa’s eyes, just for an instant.

Something like that. The cold voice again. But then she breathes out, shakes her head, turns away slightly so that she isn’t looking at Clarke.

I lost somebody and I was – She stops. I was afraid of the way I felt and I just couldn’t, Clarke. I know it doesn’t –

She looks back at Clarke, her eyes wide and dark, and there’s a crease in her brow, a little pained kink, and it’s hard to look at her.

Who did you lose? Clarke asks.

Costia. She says the name so quietly Clarke barely catches it.

Tell me. She manages, this time, to keep her voice soft.

She was. We were together for three years and then. Then there was an accident, and. Lexa shakes her head again. I didn’t – deal with it too well. Her mouth stretches into a grim sort of smile. They sent me to Europe to see if a change of scenery would help.

How long after?

A year, nearly.

You should have told me.

Lexa nods. I should have done a lot of things.

It’s not - Clarke thinks back to that week, the days and nights flowing together, and she remembers nothing but Lexa – it was just hurtful, the way you left, Lexa. It’s not like you needed to, I mean , we weren’t –

I know, says Lexa. I know. Her jaw is tight and there’s still that tiny crinkle in her brow, and the silence that falls between them is too loud.

It’s Clarke who breaks it.

Thank you for telling me, she says, but it’s too quiet, too mild. She sees, for an instant longer, something raw in Lexa’s face that she can’t interpret, but then the other woman nods, disappears into the composure that Clarke has resented so much in all the time since Rome.

I should find Raven, she says.

Okay, says Clarke, and Lexa nods again, and backs through the door, pulling it closed after her.

 

It takes an effort for Clarke to prevent herself from hurling the empty champagne glass at the door after her, and to bite back what could be a sob. But she pulls herself together, breathes until the flux of sorrow she is feeling settles, and steps back out into the bright light. At least she isn’t dripping now, she thinks. At least there’s still champagne. She snags a glass and weaves through the crowd towards the show’s centre-piece. The reason she is here.

It’s so – delicate. Nothing that she was expecting. Not from the melee of bodies Anya had so carefully arranged – she had been expecting something as robust, as dynamic as the process she’d put them through. Instead impossibly finely wrought plaster-work, in places almost like filigree, and intimations, only, of the bodies it replaces. And the paint surprises her, gold leaf, darker tints, the hint of writing. The detail of it absorbs her first, its almost floral whorls concealing the human form, but then she notes the structure’s interior through its gaps - the imprint of someone’s clavicle, these shallow undulations their rib-cage, even the burred marks of their body hair.

She steps away slightly, and feels, yet again, that the air has been punched from her lungs.

The wider vantage point has allowed her to see how the detail builds into a whole, and she sees what she did not at first, that the work centres on the interaction of two forms, the tension between them softly obscured by the swirl of the stucco, that finally the eye excavates. It's elegiac, Clarke thinks, surprised. It's like an elegy for a monumental narrative, one in the same mode as a Renaissance pieta, or a Classical wrestling match. But it isn’t this, this ornamented masquerade concealing the emotional catastrophe of the figures’ disappearance, that stops her breath; she traces the absence under the stucco cage and recalls herself. With Lexa. Anya has centred her work on the last thing Clarke wants to think about, yet here she is, staring. Her eyes burn.

She feels Anya’s arrival as a displacement of air, a peripheral darkening, nods without moving her gaze from the piece in front of her.

Clarke. Pronounced as a challenge.

Anya, she replies, neutral as she can manage.

The artist breaks the little silence that falls between them.

So, do you like it?

I don’t know about like. It’s – compelling.

Compelling. Clarke turns her head. Anya is smirking, her hands jammed in her pockets, her shoulders dropped. She suspects that this is as congenial as the other woman gets.

I don’t think _my_ reaction’s going to tell you much about it. But you know that, right?

Anya’s smirk stretches wider. I’m interested, all the same.

It’s not what the process suggested.

Yes. Raven. She likes chemical reactions. There’s a warmer tilt to the smirk, for an instant. And then the artist waits.

I - why did you pick – Clarke fumbles at the words.

There was a sort of tension between you that fits. Anya catches Clarke’s eyes, stares. But _you_ know that.

This is – difficult. For me, Clarke offers after another moment’s silence.

Difficult for both of you, Anya replies. Clarke could swear there’s a faint softness to her expression now. It surprises her. But then the smirk is back.

You should stick around. After this. She gestures at their surroundings.

More champagne? Clarke lifts an eyebrow.

Whatever you want. Please. Anya touches her shoulder, and the smirk approaches a smile.

Maybe, says Clarke.

 

*

She stays. She stares at the work until her heart slows down, and then she falls into conversation with one of the other students who had been there that day.

It’s really not what I was expecting, Monty says. Nothing like the Mountain series. It’s much more – I don’t know, gentle.

You think? says Clarke. Monty shrugs.

You worked out which bit’s you?

Clarke points out the gilded curve that follows the line of her bowed head, spine, and left leg.

Oh wow, says Monty. You’re like the core of it. And that must be her cousin, then? Monty traces the darker form that twists against the gold. You were posed with her, right?

Is Lexa Anya’s cousin?

Lexa, is that her name? The quiet dark haired woman? Pretty?

Clarke nods.

It’s very cool, says Monty, turning back to the work.

But Clarke’s heart is beating too fast again – she excuses herself to get another glass of champagne. Monty waves her away, full glass already in hand.

 

The champagne smooths the edges off the evening. Clarke drifts, chatting to people she half knows, faintly wondering if she should leave. She barely sees Lexa, as though by mutual consent they had chosen circuits that wouldn’t meet. But of course it couldn’t last, Clarke thinks sourly, as a hand grasps her sleeve and pulls her into a conversation. A conversation with Jaha, whose position as Dean lends a certain resonance to his pomposity, Clarke supposes, preparing a polite expression, until she sees that it’s not Jaha alone she is expected to speak with, but Jaha and Lexa. A combination cooked up in her nightmares. It’s small consolation that Lexa looks close to slinging him on his back and knifing him.

It’s not no consolation though. She catches her eye, watches her inhaling her irritation. If it were anyone else, she would smile.

\- such a privilege – he is saying, and Clarke nods because it’s polite and she would never hear the end of it from her mother if she is rude to him, even though he’s so self absorbed she isn’t sure he’d even notice – Ms Van Der Wald’s show – She zones out as he rehashes Anya’s career, as though neither of them know a thing about the artist. She is pretty sure she is glazing over; she fixes her eyes over Jaha’s shoulder and waits for an opportunity to escape.

It takes the brush of Lexa’s fingers against her hand - that she jumps away from - to pull her attention back to Jaha.

Are you alright, Clarke? he asks, his eyes flicking over the glass in her hand.

Yes, she replies. Yes, I’m sorry, Dean Jaha, could you repeat - ?

I was just saying that she’s caught a wonderful energy between you both – I understand that you two are the centre of the piece?

I just stood where I was asked to. She can’t help how defensive it sounds.

Oh, he says, and looks from one to the other.

Lexa swirls the remaining champagne in her glass around, eyes fixed on the tiny vortex the movement creates. But you’ve met each other before?

Yes. We had an encounter in Italy last year. Lexa’s head snaps up.

An encounter? she says.

What would you call it, Lexa? Clarke looks her in the eye.

Jaha is looking between them now, his eyes narrowing. Neither of them pay him any attention.

I – Lexa bites her lip and something ripples through Clarke; they’re staring at each other now, and the Dean is starting to look annoyed. Then Lexa is reaching forward, grasping her forearm.

I must apologise, Dean Jaha, I have to - she says, drawing Clarke away. Has to what, Clarke wonders dumbly, but allows herself to be led.

 

Lexa pulls her through the crowd, ignoring several people who call her name, and back into the office area. She shoves the door closed behind them after they pass through it, and pushes Clarke against the wall beside it. She’s standing too close. Clarke can feel her body heat, and the sensation washes through her like a shock. She licks her lips. Lexa stands and stares at her for a moment and then she starts to speak, fast, as though she’s afraid she won’t manage to get it out.

Look I know, Clarke, I know I was awful but it was – the timing was terrible but I need you to know that it wasn’t, I never felt like it was just an encounter. I came back and I tried and tried to stay out of your way because I know I was unforgivable but I can’t, I just can’t. Clarke. Her voice goes low, slows down. I can’t stop thinking, she says. I can’t.

And she steps closer, slow, and Clarke holds her breath.

Clarke.

It’s barely a breath, and Clarke can feel the exhalation that carries it on the skin of her face, and her heart is beating so hard she feels sure that its vibration through her body is visible, and she just can’t stand it anymore, so she leans forward into Lexa’s space – and somewhere in her head she notes that their bodies are echoing, in reverse, the art work in the gallery outside, Clarke curving up into Lexa this time – and she pushes slightly parted lips against Lexa’s

and everything stops.

Until she feels the small, answering pressure of Lexa’s lower lip, and then Lexa’s hands are on her face and Lexa is stepping closer, pressing her against the wall and Clarke’s breath is lost and her blood is molten and rushing downwards and she’s thankful for the wall because otherwise she might fall as Lexa’s tongue brushes her own and her hands find the skin of Lexa’s back and drag her closer and 

she never wants to stop

but Lexa pulls back, with a sound in her throat which could be a moan or a sob, or maybe both, and she looks at Clarke with dark eyes and swollen lips and she says

It wasn’t just an encounter, Clarke. Not for me.

And then she steps away from Clarke, and the air seems cold, and she casts her eyes down and disappears through the door.

 

Clarke slumps against the wall and tries to catch her breath, tries to coax her brain out of the fugue into which it has vanished. She touches her lips with her fingers, feeling slight chapping, and that slightly bruised sensation. Lexa had kissed her. She can't process it.

But.

Lexa had kissed her and then she had run away, after implying that it was Clarke – Clarke! – who had treated that week in Rome as though it were nothing. And now Lexa is running away, again.

 

She swears and rips the door open. Back in the exhibition space, the numbers are dwindling now. She catches Raven’s eye across the space, and Anya who is standing beside her turns to glare at Clarke, raising her arm and pointing towards the door. Clarke doesn’t stop to find her blazer even though it is still pouring outside, and she runs. But outside the pavements are empty. Clarke stands and gazes at the cars, white and red light cutting through the rain, and lets the sound of windscreen wipers and tyres tracking the deluged tarmac, of engines and horns blaring soak through her. Lexa has gone.

 

By the time she goes back into the gallery – to retrieve her blazer, to trudge home where she thinks she is going to drink herself to sleep, because _why fucking not_ \- she’s wiping water out of her eyes and when she can see again it’s Raven that’s standing in front of her, not Lexa, her mouth twisted up a little, and she’s shrugging.

The towel again, then? she says. Clarke nods. She feels exhausted.

Come on, says Raven, and takes her hand and leads her once again in to the office suite. The towel is where she left it. Despite the musty scent, she buries her face in it again.

Hey. Raven’s voice is muffled by the cloth. She looks up.

Look, says Raven, I shouldn’t really do this. She’s holding out a scrap of paper. But you’re both still clearly stuck on whatever it was. If you think –

It’s a number.

Lexa’s, says Clarke. It’s not a question, but Raven nods anyway.

She thinks about it. Invasive, interfering, she thinks. She takes it anyway.

I think it’s finishing up out there, Raven says. We’re gonna head out, if you want to join us. Clarke stares at her.

You know, whatever. She smiles nervously. Just come join us if you want.

 

She leaves and Clarke scrubs the towel over her hair. She doesn’t fuss, she’s just going to get wet again, most likely. She drops the towel on the chair, pulls on her blazer, and feels the weight of her phone swing against her hip.

She probably shouldn’t. But anyway.

If u don’t want it to just b an encounter u can’t just leave

She presses send before she can think about it and leaves the office. Nearly everyone has gone now, and Anya looks over at her as she steps back into the bright light. Clarke moves towards her, apologies on her tongue, when her phone buzzes in her hand. She almost drops it.

You’re the one who said it was an encounter.

U r the one that RAN AWAY

Clarke presses send, her finger hard against the screen in irritation. This woman.

 

She’s almost reached Anya and Raven when the artist’s attention swings to someone behind her, and Clarke hears the door thump closed. She turns around.

Lexa is standing at the entrance, her hair darkened, rainwater a sheen on her skin. She has left her coat somewhere because it’s just the dress now, clinging even more – she looks like she’s emerged from a body of water, made sleek by it. She looks up from her phone as Clarke takes a first step towards her.

Text shouting is rude, Clarke, she says, but it almost looks like she’s smiling, that subtle curve in her lip that Clarke hasn’t seen since before the train station, and she feels a kind of stiffness that she’s carried in her shoulders all day, and maybe since the studio, and maybe for months longer than that, maybe since Rome – she feels it ease away, and she smiles

a wide smile, in reply.


End file.
